Andrew Sullivan has been keeping track. We are up to 15 now…
I’m posting this because none of the direct, indisputably proven, factual untruths that Palin has uttered has yet to be retracted by this candidate or her running mate. When you have a leading politician running on a record of outright lies, and those lies are deemed irrelevant, you have a problem. Each one has been fact-checked to near-death. They are not the usual political lie – hyperbole, parsing, exaggeration, spin. They are factual, checkable, indisputable untruths.
Palin could not have asked her girls for permission to accept McCain’s veep offer if she also says she accepted the offer unblinkingly and right away. Palin did fire a police chief even as she insisted to a reporter she hadn’t. She did violate the confidential medical records of Mike Wooten. She hasn’t met with any trade missions from Russia. She does not have any gay friends that anyone can find. She did not oppose the Bridge to Nowhere. She did not sell that plane on eBay. Her Teleprompter did not fail in her convention speech. Alaska’s state scientists did not conclude that polar bears were in no danger. She did deny publicly that humans had anything to do with climate change.
Alaska does not provide “nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy,” as she claimed. The gas pipeline she touts as her major “mission accomplished” has not broken ground and may never do so. She did not take a pay-cut as mayor of Wasilla. And on and on. Anyone with Google can check all of these out. Including reporters.
These are all documented, bald-faced factually irrefutable lies. More to the point: she refuses to cop to them or be held accountable for them or take questions about them. Until she does, we can rightly infer there is no reason to believe anything she says, and that includes her recent medical history. A liar like this cannot be taken on trust. We have to verify it all.
Release the medical records and tax returns now.